


...But a Torment to Themselves

by Devilc



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Mind Games, Multi, Religious Conflict, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-23
Updated: 2018-01-23
Packaged: 2019-03-08 11:30:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13457331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Devilc/pseuds/Devilc
Summary: "I need you to do something for me," Ivar says quietly, shuttering the window and hobbling towards the door.Heahmund sleeps in Ivar's chamber now, on a pallet next to the bed.  His leathers, quilted jack, leggings, and boots were taken away from him the other day and were returned cleaned and mended in preparation for the fight to come, quality work, too, on the repairs.  He's also been given a new linen undershift and small clothes, for which he is grateful.





	...But a Torment to Themselves

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Film Chevalier and Ixchel 55 for the swift and helpful beta.
> 
> Title is from a quote by William Penn: "The jealous are troublesome to others, but a torment to themselves."
> 
> Vikings is copyright its respective owner(s) -- this is fair use work of whatiffery and a labor of love, not lucre.

_Heahmund: Why do you offer me this choice?_

_Ivar: Because I am jealous of you. I would like to be like you … strong, and whole, a great warrior. That is why I saved you, and that is why I want you to fight alongside me._

_~Vikings 5x06 "The Message"~_

~oo(0)oo~

"I need you to do something for me," Ivar says quietly, shuttering the window and hobbling towards the door.

Heahmund sleeps in Ivar's chamber now, on a pallet next to the bed. His leathers, quilted jack, leggings, and boots were taken away from him the other day and were returned cleaned and mended in preparation for the fight to come, quality work, too, on the repairs. He's also been given a new linen undershift and small clothes, for which he is grateful.

Though they have not given him any weapons yet, he could have killed Ivar with his own knives several times last night. But he didn't, and he can't quite say why. 

Heahmund spreads his hands to indicate that Ivar should continue and settles himself on the heavy wooden chest at the foot of the bed. But Ivar does not respond, instead he continues to the door and after a brief conversation, ushers in a woman in a long grey hooded cloak. Unlike most of the Norseman Heahmund has seen and heard, Ivar has made no advances towards any women. Oh, his eyes have followed several comely ones, his gaze burning with lust (and, oddly, resentment), but he has never reached for one, or spoken to one other than to issue a command. 

As soon as Ivar shuts and bars the door, the woman pushes her hood back to reveal light blonde hair framing a face as beautiful and delicate as an April day. Removing her cloak reveals a light red gown which does nothing to disguise the ripeness of her figure and whose neckline and girdle are embroidered with runes. A large pendant carved with three interlocking crescents rests just below the base of her neck like a badge of office.

Desire swells within Heahmund at the sight of her and he resolutely pushes it back and schools his face to blankless.

"This is Freydis," Ivar says, gesturing. "She was once my slave. I freed her in York and she chose to return with me. She is a godly woman. She trains to be a Völva … a kind of a holy woman, maybe even a little like your nuns."

Though it is clear Freydis doesn't understand the English tongue, she knows praise when she hears it and she beams at Ivar.

"She is nothing like a nun, for she is a witch who serves demons and not the true God," Heahmund replies, relieved to be on familiar ground. Ivar rolls his eyes.

Undaunted by his tone, Freydis studies him, her gaze clear and direct, and while Heahmund sees questioning in it, he doesn't see fear.

"She is not afraid of you." The revelation leaves Heahmund's mouth before he can stop it.

"No, she is not," Ivar smiles. "Which means she's not afraid of you, either."

Freydis points at him and says something, and her voice is clear, light, and sweet, almost angelic in tone.

"Yes," Ivar answers her, and then to Heahmund he says, "Freydis says you are marked by the gods --"

"Leave your heathen gods out of this, I want nothing to do with them," Heahmund growls.

"-- you are marked by fate," Ivar continues in that indomitable way of his, "like me." He looks at her and asks something, something that Heahmund can almost understand, given the similarity of the Norse tongue to English, something about _us_.

Freydis's face lights up. "Yes," she replies and strides towards Heahmund, unknotting her girdle, loosening the ties to her gown and stepping out of it.

She is as glorious as Eve, and as dangerous.

Realization dawns on him. 

"No!" he snarls, low and throaty.

"Why not?" Ivar asks, crutching over. "Have you not known a woman? Are you not curious?"

Heahmund closes his eyes. "I have sinned. I have surrendered to my lust and sinned before." He opens his eyes and bores into Ivar's eerie blue gaze, "The answer is --" he sees something flicker in Ivar's eyes, "Wait … why _this_?" He gestures between them, "And why now?"

Ivar draws a deep breath. "I want her." He bites off the next words. "But. I. Am. Not. Whole."

"And I am," Heahmund whispers.

"Exactly." Ivar's eyes glint with a strange, mad light. 

Desperation, Heahmund realizes after a moment. He pauses before he speaks because he's still not quite sure, and yet, he's afraid he's got it right. "You want me to --"

"Us!" Ivar spits the word. " _Us!_ "

Heahmund glances at Freydis, who looks expectantly between them.

"You want us to --"

Ivar cuts in, "I have never been able …" He swallows and starts again, "I need to know!" And then, softly, almost broken, "I need to know."

Heahmund has no answer to that. There are no words, really, but Freydis reads the answer in his body's set, his slumped shoulders, his long, shuddering sigh. Her eyes lock with his and gentle, nimble fingers make short work of the lacings of his jerkin. For all that he tells himself that she's a heathen, and worse, a witch, and this is _sin_ , there is something incredibly beautiful and even pure in her eyes, and he lets himself be undressed like a small child.

A part of his mind screams at him to resist, screams the words of the Whore and the great Beast from the Book of Revelation, but another voice rises in response, just as mighty, and those are the words that tumble from his lips.

"Praying? Now?" Heahmund dimly hears Ivar say, as he scoots back onto the bed, a thick mattress of fragrant grasses and soft furs beneath him, followed by an earthly chuckle, "'May your breasts be like clusters of the vine, and the scent of your breath like apples --' Oh, I _like_ the words of this prayer, priest." Heahmund hears him speaking Norse to Freydis, translating the words as she crawls towards him, her eyes bright with purpose, and as soon as she reaches him, Ivar is in the bed with them, naked to the waist, and Heahmund feels something unclench inside.

Ivar doesn't lie down, but pushes himself up. Heahmund knew, but had never seen until just now how powerful his arms and shoulders are. Ivar's chest, like his face is almost as hairless as a boy's. His eyes glitter in the dim lights of the oil lamps and the fire crackling in the hearth, and Heahmund shivers inside at the sheer covetousness he sees in Ivar's eyes as they rake over his body and from there to Freydis's and back. He looks at his own body through new eyes -- his muscular chest, but not disproportionately so, a working man's chest, scarred from battle and covered in a dusting of hair, the blades of his hip bones, the trail of hair leading to his cock, which rises like a red-tipped spear from a bramble of curls, and understands how it's an item of _envy_ to Ivar.

Freydis straddles him and reaches for his cock, but Ivar speaks, brushing her hand away before taking Heahmund in his sword-callused grip -- the sensation causing Heahmund to gasp and shiver -- and guiding him into her hot wetness, which fits him like a glove and Heahmund cannot hold back the bone deep groan as she sheathes herself fully. She rocks her hips and he screws his eyes shut, clenching at the bedding and he can smell as well as feel Ivar in the bed next to them, salt, earth, and musk, the ghosts of Ivar's quickening breaths over his flesh as his hands rove between the two of them, exploring

"Why are your eyes shut, priest?" Ivar gently strokes his cheek with with a finger, causing Heahmund to start.

Freydis has set a determined pace. "Can'tLookWon'tLast" he grits out over the hammering in his ears. "StopStopStop!" he gasps a moment later, and reaches out to grab her arms. She freezes.

Heaving for breath, his control on the razor's edge, Heahmund still dares not look, but the shudders racing through his body subside enough for him to say, "Let's try this another way."

~oo(0)oo~

Freydis lies between them on her side, facing Ivar, her left leg thrown over his hip. She undid the lacing of his breeches as soon as Heahmund explained what he wanted, and, after a moment, Ivar guided her hand away from his half-hard prick, pulled her in and began kissing her fiercely. From the glimpses Heahmund gets as he determinedly rocks into Freydis from behind, it seems that's about as hard as he gets, even though he's getting plenty of friction there from Heahmund's regular thrusts. 

"Better?" he asks, even though he's not really sure whom he's asking. He still dares not look at much of anything beyond his hand on Freydis's hip.

Ivar tears himself from Freydis's kisses and gives a breathy, "Yes."

Heahmund tangles his hand in her hair, pulling her lips away from Ivar's and whisper-pants "His neck, go for his neck," into her delicate pink ear and she understands _enough_ because she gives a throaty chuckle in reply and there's a gasp and a _groaaaaan_ from Ivar and Heahmund darts his eyes up long enough to catch a glimpse of an almost shocked expression on his face, his eyes slitted and glazed with the pleasure Freydis has introduced him to as she works fiercely at the place where jaw joins neck.

Ivar's free hand roves between their bodies sometimes cupping Freydis's breast, sometimes skimming down the side of Heahmund's ribs, or roving across his torso, tickling at the hair leading down from his navel, while Heahmund keeps his hand _clamped_ on Freydis's hip as he rut rut ruts into her heat and wetness.

"Look at me," Ivar says, edgy and desperate.

"I can't," he manages to grit out, because he's close enough that if he looks at Ivar or Freydis right now, it will be over too soon, and he knows that Freydis is close -- he can hear it in the little cries that involuntarily burst from her -- but not close enough.

"I said look at me, priest," Ivar's voice is strangled.

And just the idea of looking at him -- meeting those otherworldly blue eyes -- and Heahmund can feel it coming that much faster, can feel it coiling in his lower spine, can feel a tightening in his balls as they start to draw up. He snaps his hand off Freydis's hip, snatches Ivar's hand, and drives it where it needs to be, that spot between Freydis's legs -- she gasps at the sensation of their hands and clenches around him almost causing him to lose it -- that spot where his body joins to hers. 

"Feel!" he pants, and a full body shudder takes him as Ivar's fingers tease at the base of his cock and then -- only then -- he locks his eyes with Ivar's as snap-snap-snap, his hips flex of their own accord and his prick swells that last measure as Freydis cries out and spasms around him and he spends in a searing, white-hot rush, and Ivar's eyes roll back in his head as, with a long, low moan, he shudders with the violence of his orgasm.

~oo(0)oo~

Every muscle in his body tells him to roll off his back and go towards the warmth of the already half-slumbering Freydis and surrender to sleep. Heahmund draws in a deep breath, rolls the other way, swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands. He gropes for his tunic, leggings, and boots in the dim light.

"Where are you going, priest?" Ivar's voice is sleepy.

"To do penance for my sin," Heahmund replies. 

"Wait for me," Ivar says, rolling himself off the bed and onto the floor, the noise and motion causing Freydis to stir and then snuggle deeper into the furs.

"There is no need," he clips the words off.

"What do you think you are going to do, priest?" Ivar says as he hauls himself onto a chair, does up the lacings of his breeches, and reaches for his shirt. "I can't just let you wander alone out there -- it's asking for trouble."

~oo(0)oo~

There are no brambles nearby, and when he tries to scourge himself with his belt, Heahmund realizes that Ivar will fight him for real if he continues. ("Can't have you at less than your best when we take Kattegat.") Heahmund ends up mortifying his flesh in the icy waters of the fjord until Ivar says, "You've paid the price, priest. Your lips are blue from cold." 

Heahmund staggers onto the beach, his teeth chattering so violently he cannot speak, and Ivar hands him a coarse length of cloth -- an old sail by the look of it -- and Heahmund briskly rubs the warmth back into his body before he puts his clothes back on.

Freydis rolls over and murmurs something in her sleep when Heahmund adds a log to the fire to keep it going through the night. Ivar settles himself in bed and looks pointedly at Heahmund who shakes his head an emphatic no and climbs onto his pallet, his back to them, and pulls the scratchy wool blanket over his head. He murmurs the pater noster under his breath until sleep claims him.

~oo(0)oo~

The vivid love marks on his neck cause Ivar to be greeted with a round of guffaws at breakfast. He breaks off half a loaf of bread and passes it to Heahmund, along with a tankard of small beer. 

The bread is still warm from the oven, and the crock between them holds freshly churned butter, sweet, not salted. 

Heahmund crosses himself and says grace, and, oddly enough, Ivar waits for him to finish before he tucks in.

"You know," Ivar says brightly after a moment of chewing, "in our faith, we too pay the price to balance the scales. Even Odin All-father gave up one of his eyes for knowledge."

Heahmund closes his eyes against the bitterness that wells up in him and keeps his voice even as he replies, "Well, now you know. " A moment later he adds, "Is it what you thought it would be?" 

"No," Ivar says a moment later, voice hushed. "It was … different."

Heahmund reads the rest in his eyes. It was a loss of control, but he wants it again, which frightens him. Heahmund pities Ivar in that moment. _He_ can set last night right with God, but there is nothing Ivar can do, no prayer or penance to any god that will free him from his fear, for that comes with surrender and acceptance, and _that_ , Ivar cannot do. He can only lash out in anger and fear and meet force with force.

So, even when he wins, he loses.


End file.
